Product Review: Parma!

We really like Parma!, the new vegan parmesan made by Eat In The Raw.

Parma is unlike other vegan parmesan products we have tried so far. Its minimalist ingredient list is as follows: "Raw Organic Walnuts, Red Star Nutritional Yeast, Celtic Sea Salt & Love" (yes, really). There is also a "Chipotle Cayenne" variety, which contains a few more ingredients and is mildly spicy.

As you can guess by the simple ingredients, Parma doesn't taste like dairy parmesan much. Which is not a bad thing in my book. In fact, it's a good thing. Parma tastes simpler, lighter and healthier. The simple combination of ground walnuts and nutritional yeast does a remarkable job playing the role of - but not mimicking - parmesan.

See, the way I understand Parma is that it doesn't even try hard to imitate anything. Instead, it is a new vegan product which is tasty and healthy, and can be sprinkled on your food for an additional kick in taste and texture. Yes, it's sort of like parmesan, but it's also different from it - and it's different in all the good ways. I find this approach very attractive, and I would like to see more vegan products along these lines, in addition to pure imitation products.



Parma has become a permanent fixture on our table whenever we have pizza or pasta, and we also sometimes sneak it in the movie theater with us to sprinkle on our popcorn. It is highly recommended you get your hands on some and give it a try.

This is an unsolicited product review. If you want us to review your vegan product, do get in touch - we love getting free stuff.

Cheddar Teese

In addition to the standard mozzarella, Rainbow now carries two new variaties of Teese: Cheddar and Nacho.

We gave Cheddar a try recently -- we tried it in Mac & Cheese, and also on pizza, and in both cases it performed well. It tastes very good, and melts just like the mozzarella Teese.



540 grams of fridge dough meant a slightly thicker pizza than usual.



We used both mozzarella and cheddar Teese.



And some Yves vegan pepperoni.



Before baking:



After baking (18 min. @ 475F):





Nice bottom. The pizza screens keep delivering. I haven't used a baking stone in several years now.



Next day's lunch.

Special Thanks...

To this year's vegan Thanksgiving!



(Video shot at Animal Place.)

We already baked a vegan pumpkin pie last night:



And today we prepared a whole Tofurky feast with dumplings, gravy, greens, roasted vegetables and cranberry sauce. Happy Thanksgiving! (Also, consider participating in Buy Nothing Day tomorrow!)

(Not Quite) Ciabatta

While we're on the topic of simple things you can do with fridge dough, here's a quick and easy approximation of the famous Italian ciabatta. Strictly speaking, this is not really a ciabatta -- "real" ciabatta is made with a biga or pre-ferment, and the process, while simple, takes almost a whole day. A long time ago (at least it seems like it was a long time ago), I shared a house with a few friends who were fans of my baking. I baked a ciabatta almost every day for about two years then, so I learned quite a bit about this bread. At some point, I might revive my slumbering skills and document the process in a post here on EP.

In the meantime, while this bread lacks the depth of flavor of the real thing, it is still delicious (especially fresh), it's completely easy to make, and can be made on short notice (provided you have dough waiting in the fridge) in about an hour plus cooling time. It is a perfectly adequate bread, say, for dipping in that expensive extra virgin olive oil you couldn't resist buying at the Farmer's Market (not that I would ever do such a thing).

To start out, preheat the oven to 475 F, and cut off about 2 lbs. from your fridge dough. Lay it on a baking sheet (these days I prefer to use my pizza screens for baking bread), lined with parchment paper. Lightly flour the top, then flatten it with your hands, poking the dough here and there with your fingers. You are looking to create the familiar "slipper" shape (ciabatta means slipper in Italian), about 1.5 inches thick. Above all, be gentle with the dough. Only handle it as much as absolutely needed to do the shaping. You want to preserve as many of the bubbles as possible in the dough.



Let stand for 10 minutes, then bake for about 45 - 50 minutes on the bottom rack, during which it will rise nicely. Here's the simple secret for baking great ciabatta: bake at a high heat for a long time. Don't worry about burning it. In general, you have to bake the crap out of ciabatta, to achieve the two main characteristics of it: a thick, crunchy crust and the elastic, holey inside. A nicely done ciabatta's bottom should have a few almost black spots from all the heat. But, as always, use your best judgement. You don't want to end up with a charred brick, either.



Note the nice network of large holes, which is the trademark of a well done ciabatta. This loaf approximates the real thing very well.



Let cool on a rack for at least half an hour, if not a full hour. Then slice, and enjoy with aforementioned olive oil, hummus, or really anything you like. Apart from oil dipping, I find that this bread works especially well alongside stew-style dishes, as in the picture below. Here I cooked lecsó, a stew of tomatoes, bell peppers, onion, Tofurky sausage and paprika. I loved this dish during my childhood in Hungary and it was easy to veganize and prepare.

Teese Video Fun

You may have already seen this little EP "teeser" (heh) I made a while ago (though I never posted it here before), but now it even made it to Teese's official site!

Baby Buns

Here at Ethical Pizza we put the "simple" back in baking, so here's the simplest and fastest way of using fridge dough. I don't know of a quicker way to have freshly baked bread on the table -- a mere 20 minutes after you have managed to roll out of the bed on a lazy morning. (If you do, let me know.) It certainly beats any of those pre-baking / freezing / reheating methods that I never could be bothered with (again, think "lazy".)

Turn on the oven (450 F).

Take your bucket of dough out of the fridge. Using scissors, cut off pieces around the size of a walnut or two (I show the scissors technique in the fridge dough article, linked above).



Pinch two ends together like this...



...then lift and drop the resulting balls on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, and bake. It doesn't matter if the oven is not not fully heated when you put the buns in. Just put them in as soon as they're all ready. They won't look like much at first...



...but they will bake up nicely into mini sized buns within about 20-25 minutes. (But check on them every so often, because the baking time depends on a variety of things such as your oven's quality or the dough's initial temperature.)



Let cool a little, then enjoy not only the buns, but also the adoration of those living with you who just woke up to the smell of freshly baked bread. ;)

ps. If you want more crumb, nothing speaks against making the buns a little bigger, but you might need to bake them a few minutes longer.

Email Issues

I just noticed that the email address specified in the "Contact me" link on the top of the page didn't work. So if you tried to write me but I haven't responded, that's why. I have fixed the issue with a new email address. If you have sent me something earlier that you would like me to see, you'd have to re-send that email. Sorry -- my bad!

Pizza At Animal Place

A few weeks ago Kathleen and I took the tour at Animal Place, the sanctuary for rescued farmed animals in Vacaville (about an hour drive from SF), which puts an emphasis on vegan education in their outreach efforts.

The tour was a lot of fun, the animals were wonderful, and afterwards I have exchanged a few emails with Marji Beach, Animal Place's outreach coordinator, providing my feedback. I also offered to bake pizza for them, an offer they gladly took me up on, when their volunteer appreciation day came along.

So last Saturday we drove out to Animal Place again, but this time we didn't spend any time with the animals. Instead, we worked away in the kitchen.

This is me removing a well done pie from the oven.



We baked 8 pizzas for the crowd of about 20 people.



Everybody seemed to love the pizza, and it was an all-around good time. Thank you Animal Place for inviting us into your kitchen -- we had fun feeding you guys!

Dough Docking: Yay or Nay? (Nay.)

Dough dockers are said to help you keep the pizza crust thin by poking holes in it, thereby preventing larger bubbles from forming. I never really had this problem to begin with. My crusts are always nice and thin. I have never heard of any master pizza bakers ever using or even mentioning dough dockers, either. On the other hand, I have also read accounts by home pizza bakers about on how dough dockers transformed their doughs into thin and crispy wonders. So, I decided to see for myself and do a direct, side by side comparison of docked and undocked crusts.

Pictured at the top of this post is a pizza crust that is half docked half left intact (I used 530 grams of fridge dough for it). After docking half of it, the crust was topped in a normal fashion with tomato sauce, Vegan Gourmet, Tofurky Italian and onions, then baked right away.



The finished pizza:



As in the pictures above, the right half is the docked one. Looks about the same as the undocked half, doesn't it? I think I can now say that if your dough and technique are in order, then dough docking does absolutely nothing for you, if you bake crusts such as mine. It adds nothing to the quality of the pizza, nor does it affect the thinness or the crispiness of the crust.

A slice of the undocked half in the front, one of the docked half in the back:





The darker spots on the bottom of the docked slice are the places where the sauce seeped through the holes in the crust.



It was a very tasty pizza, whether docked or not. But the crust wasn't any more thin or crispy on the docked side than on the undocked side.

Note: my findings are for the kind of crust I like to make. Dough docking does appear to be an important step in the process of making pizzas with a so called "cracker crust", which means a very thin, thoroughly crisp crust. I don't know much about cracker crusts, so I don't know if this is true or not.